My Beautiful Sister and Her Beloved

My sister Sarah is the first of us to get married - and her big day is coming up next month!!! She just sent us a "peak" at her engagement pictures and they are sooooo adorable! Sarah is a real beauty and Mike is a cutie, so together they are just the most picture perfect couple! They are going to have some beautiful kids, aren't they!?!

http://brockmans.org/web/photography/

I am so excited for Sarah, but it also marks a change in our family structure.. this past Christmas was different in that we had little Elizabeth around, so we had to shuffle things to fit better into her schedule... just before Christmas I was down in North Carolina with Greg's family, and Sarah flew out to Ohio after Christmas to meet all of Mike's family.... so we are about to embark into the uncharted waters of extended family....


I think we all knew how precious and fragile our time as just a nuclear family was - which is why we made sure we went on that cruise over Thanksgiving together, and why my parents relocated from new england to here last year, and why we all made Tuesday family dinners at Mom and Dad's a priority. I cherish my parents and sisters and am so grateful for each one, and it's such a blessing that we like one another and enjoy spending time together. Now there is this strange new thing happening - there are BOYS in our family now! Will they change the way we relate? Will they leave the toilet seat up (forbid it!) or make lots of sports analogies, or do other things to disrupt our little eco-system? Probably. Change happens.. doesn't mean it's bad, it's just different. And that's ok... the old saying "make new friends but keep the old" is true for family too - welcome the new ones but keep your relationships with the "old" ones also...

so I'll be flexible..

I'll welcome and cherish..

I'll embrace and relinquish...

and I'll check the toilet seat before sitting down!